Lean UX meets Brothers Grimm
My thoughts about a Lean UX workshop that I’ve attended, lectured by Diogo Terroso, from NearInteraction. It was part of a workshop series from the Lean UX Lisboa Meetup group. Although we really didn’t go deep into the UI part (and UX is not UI), there was something that fascinated me: the storytelling approach to bring structure to an idea.
Without getting into the details of the iterations and the Lean Startup techniques (there should have been a post about this already, but sometimes I get lazy. In due time.) that were used, I’m going to describe the ideation process. We had to design an application that would help people come to terms with a diagnosed disease. The first thing we did was to define the wants, needs, demands and desires of the user.
This led us to a first uninteresting result: an information repository useful to the patient and the people taking care of him, allowing them to know more about the disease, places to go when in case of emergency, nearest drug stores, etc; and a tool that would help manage drug quantities, time intervals and stocks.
There was really no differentiation in this value proposition so we iterated. And that’s where the story became meaningful. By using a Hollywood script structure, we added drama to the product.
This created an emotional bond to the user and drastically redefined it. I’ll tell the story that we have created:
“Meet John (user). John is a healthy wealthy banker. He has everything that one can only dream of: cars, mansions, shitloads of money, a yacht… John has a big family (more users) and everybody loves him.
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Then there’s our hero (product): StoryTeller. StoryTeller is a connector. He’s caring and communicative. He always has lots of stories to tell and he’s the soul of any party. He has a great memory, allowing him to always be learning and creating new stories. Stories that he uses to bring people together.
Meanwhile, John and his family receive some tragic news: John has cancer and he has only 10 months to live. Suddenly, nothing else matters. The only thing that matters is the bond between him and the ones he loves. He really wants to spend his last months of life connecting with them, reviving the good times they all had and creating an everlasting memory about all this, even when he’s gone.
John’s son in law knew about StoryTeller and decided to ask him for some help. StoryTeller came and met John and started collecting stories about his life, the time he spent with the ones he love, pictures they had, things they said. StoryTeller also helped John to know where everyone was and what were they doing during the last few months.
Everybody was very happy reliving the good moments together and creating new ones. And when John passed away, everybody felt he was still among them, because he had left the most precious gift of them all: memories of a good lifetime spent together”
By reading the story, one can understand that the product evolved into something completely different. It was based in two core features: Revival and Thought Alarm. Revival was a Path-like timeline. For those who don’t know, Path is a social network which takes Dunbar’s Number into account. It is restricted to a small number of connections and it is aimed to much more private interactions. With Revival, John brought together the good moments he spent with his friends and family, helping them remembering this. Revival was about the past; Thought Alarm was about the present and the future. The creation of current moments that would build upon Revival. Basically, it would be a snapshot of life: “I’m thinking about you guys. Where are you? What are you doing?”. The app would gather information about everyone involved and create a new moment of connection.
This was only an exercise and this app will not be built. But it was great to see the ideation process accomplished in only 3 hours and the importance of storytelling
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Gonçalo Fortes | http://goncalofortes.me | http://prodsmart.com
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